Harry Potter and the Last Man Standing
by AlamutJones
Summary: For the first time in his life, Harry gets to know his mother
1. Holding Pattern

It really hadn't been a good day.

Guildford in January was cold and wet and dark. Sleet ran icy fingers down the windowpane as Harry Potter flung himself down on the sofa, holding a handful of mail that he didn't particularly want to read. He was twenty two years old, hadn't had time to buy any decent food this week, was working a case – _another_ case, five years since Voldemort's fall and the newly beefed up Aurors' Office was still working full tilt to sort the innocent from the guilty and clean up the mess he'd left behind – that made his head hurt and he was starting to realise that he wasn't really a fan of living alone after all. He'd never lived alone before. First the Dursleys, who wouldn't have dared leave him alone in the house if he'd paid them. Then Hogwarts, the five beds in Gryffindor Tower. Even in that final year, living in a tent…even there he'd still had the comforting rush of Hermione's breathing, and the uneven rhythm of Ron's snores. He'd always assumed he'd enjoy finally having somewhere that was his alone, but so far it hadn't happened that way.

"Mmmrrrp!"

Well. Maybe he wasn't _completely_ alone. Ginny had left him Arnold. Plus Arnold's basket, Arnold's supply of cat food and vegetable peelings, and a long list of instructions pinned up safely in his kitchen. He didn't think an elderly Pygmy Puff could be that much trouble, but he still kept the note. It spoke in her voice whenever he opened the fridge, and both he and Arnold seemed to agree that this was a good thing.

Harry scratched idly at the greying purple fur where Arnold's ears might have been if he'd had any. Maybe he did – never having had a really good look at a full-sized Puffskein, Harry wasn't certain – maybe he didn't. Either way, Harry had never been able to find them. The Puff let out a low crooning "Mmmmmmmm..." of pleasure.

At least one of them was happy then.

Harry couldn't have said why he was so out of sorts. If Ginny had been there, he might have tried anyway, and then she'd have told him to stop being stupid, stop moping and complain to Ron about it until he felt better...but she was away with the Harpies. She'd be on a training camp in Snowdonia for at least a month, completely out of touch – coach's orders - except for emergencies on the scale of Diagon Alley popping out of existence. Until she got back all he'd have was Arnold and a talking fridge door.

Part of it was Rita Skeeter's fault. Almost before the round of funerals had ended, she'd started digging up all the muck she could find. She'd put out a book about Snape. She'd written articles about the Battle of Hogwarts that had honestly made Harry feel as though he'd bathed in Flobberworm slime, and might have worked them into a full book if Kingsley hadn't sat the full power of his Ministerial veto on her efforts. Since she couldn't dig through the rubble of Hogwarts, she'd contented herself with putting out a book about Harry himself, _with his address in it._ Shortly afterwards, the letters had begun to arrive. Every time her book got reprinted – about every four months, and somehow his address was updated each time – a new flood of letters would start.

This was what he was holding now. Arnold "hmmmm?"-ed again, licking the corner of the largest envelope with a long pink tongue like a bootlace.

"Okay Arnold. Here we go..."

Fanmail. A lot of fanmail. Mostly harmless, except for the few where witches kept putting photos of themselves in the envelope. This time, the woman in question was wrapped in a large and fluffy towel that had been carefully embroidered with a large lightning bolt (was that supposed to be his scar?) and the words **_NOTHING COMES BETWEEN ME AND HARRY POTTER._**

Ginny wasn't really a fan of those ones. Some of the witches were very good looking, but still. Better not keep them.

Oh God. Oh wow. There was a marriage proposal in the next envelope he opened. A very...um... _explicit_ one. Harry's face grew hot just reading the first three lines. This was saying a lot, since the letter was seven pages long, and (Harry checked just to be sure) written in miniscule, cramped, fussy little writing on both sides of each page! Someone named Tabitha Sparley had been reading far, far too many terrible romance novels. She'd used the word "ravishment" as though she meant it.

 _No. Thank you, I'm honoured, but_ _ **NO.**_

The next one...Howler. Anonymous, as the Howlers usually were. The first few words – before he managed to fire off a hasty Muffling Charm – were distorted beyond all recognition. Harry could hardly tell whether it was a man or a woman speaking. It didn't really matter. Man or woman, anyone who'd send him an anonymous Howler usually started off down the same track anyway – _he was a Muggle-loving, deceiving little so and so, he would get what was coming to him eventually! Just wait and see! Ahahaha! AhahahahaHAHAHAHA!_

And so on.

Once the Howler had thrashed itself out, he carefully scraped up the ashes of the envelope and closed them away in a sealed Evidence Enclosure Bubble, one of the neat little tricks that life in the Auror Office had taught him. Howlers were basically harmless, but since it was him...the Investigation Department would break those ashes down as far as they could magically be made to go and strip away every hint of spellwork to find out who was responsible. The EEB – glowing faintly orange, and making the hair on his arms stand on end when he got too close – shrank away to nothing, then disappeared with a noise like a bicycle bell. A neatly written receipt fell out of the air to land where it had been on his coffee table.

Harry sighed.

Part of his mood was Rita Skeeter's fault. The other half...

Harry knew for a fact he wasn't the only one in a slump. Hermione seemed all right most of the time…except for the part where she'd gone to Australia, been there for six weeks already and not worked up the nerve yet to actually approach her parents at all. The letters he got from her came attached to the leg of a black and white bird with a vicious beak that he hadn't let within ten feet of Arnold, and tended to swing wildly between cheerfully determined and outright panicky. Sometimes she managed both in the space of half a page. Ron spent half his time talking to George at the joke shop these days, instead of working on cases. Half the cases he did work on felt like his heart wasn't in it. Neville...Neville was incredible in the field, but Harry didn't think he'd ever truly wanted to be an Auror at all; good as he was, Neville seemed more like he'd fallen into it by mistake. He wasn't completely sure _where_ Luna was right now, except to narrow it down to somewhere in Iceland where she was very excited at the prospect of mind controlling vapours coming from the hot springs. It wasn't entirely clear to Harry what this had to do with Snorkacks, which Luna had _also_ mentioned, but it seemed to make sense to Luna.

It had seemed like a great idea at the time. _You survived the Battle of Hogwarts? Congratulations, come work for the Aurors Office! Uncle Kingsley wants YOU!_ At the beginning, Harry had been sure that – short of life as an international Quidditch star, which didn't seem likely – being an Auror was what he was meant to do. It felt like much, much longer ago than the calendar told him it was, but hadn't he said as much in his Careers Advice meeting?

It didn't feel like that now. They seemed to spend their time chasing rumours and mistakes. He personally wasn't allowed to do very much at all. Junior Aurors – even the accelerated ones – spent half their lives making tea and nipping around to the Indian takeaway around the corner for more pappadums. At least another quarter seemed to be pure paperwork. Harry was almost certain he'd done more writing at work than at Hogwarts. Even when there was a raid...Harry had a sneaking suspicion that Kingsley had told his boss to be _careful_ of him. It would be terrible to have the man who defeated the worst Dark wizard of his age taken out by a comparatively straightforward Blood Freezing Hex and spend two months in St Mungo's with acute hypothermia!

He wasn't sure what he'd expected life as an Auror to be like, but surely not like felt petty and political and slow. It felt _small._

...But what else was he supposed to do with his life?

 _This would be so much easier to figure out if Ginny were here._

Arnold pushed his...head? His body? His...whatever it was that Pygmy Puffs had against Harry's palm with a loud chirp. The bootlace tongue was out again, lapping around each of his fingers in turn.

"Sorry Arnold. You're right. Let's keep going."

Brilliant. He was talking to a (more or less) sentient fluffball. It was basically a replacement for his girlfriend. If Rita Skeeter ever got hold of this – Harry found himself searching the room for stray beetles, just in case – she'd have a field day. It might make her year.

 ** _HARRY POTTER FINALLY GOES POTTY._** That was a Golden Quill winning headline if ever he'd heard one.

Next in the pile was a Christmas card. An ordinary Muggle Christmas card, in an ordinary white Muggle envelope with a stamp. When he opened the card, there was a robin on it, and a few awkward words in his cousin's careful, blocky handwriting.

 _To Harry_

 _Happy Christmas. We are all well. Hoping you are too._

 _From Dudley_

Dudley would...never be his friend, but they were working on a sort of truce. Slowly. Cards were part of that truce, and they definitely beat some of the other things Dudley had tried to give him for Christmas. A few years ago, the best he'd have hoped for would have been a black eye. A Christmas card (even if, as he suspected, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia didn't know about it) was a step up by any measure. Now he thought about it, Harry could almost imagine Dudley sitting down to fill out the card, concentrating so hard on getting his words right that his tongue poked out between his teeth.

He was almost to the bottom of the pile now. There was just one letter left.

This was a strange one. It had definitely come by owl post – there was no stamp, and he could see the telltale rips in the top of the envelope where the owl's talons had torn it – but where the others had all been on parchment, and clearly written by quill, this one was on cheap lined paper of the sort that might be torn from an exercise book, and it was written in blue biro.

Harry passed his wand over it experimentally, murmuring another one of the Auror Office Specials. If the letter had a curse on it, if it had been dipped in poison, if anything had been done to it at all, he would know, and then he could get into more specific protective charms once he knew there was something to look for.

But none of this had happened. There was no response. The letter lay there completely undisturbed.

Harry picked it up.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I suspect you get a lot of mail these days, and I'm sorry to have to add to your sorting!_

 _Your mother left some things with me before she died. None of them have any monetary value, they're mostly photographs and such, but I thought that you might like to know. I've held on to them for a long time, but they're not my things to keep. They should be yours now._

 _It's up to you. If you want to have a look, come to the Lock and Key in Butetown, Cardiff. I'll know you when I see you._

 _T. Morgan_


	2. The Trouble With Freddie

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. This was just a pub, small and nondescript and almost deserted at this time of day, tucked away in an alleyway that led down to the docks. He'd nearly gone right past it. An ordinary pub. An ordinary _Muggle_ pub at that, or at least it seemed to be. There was a long, curving bar that shone with years of polish, though the runner that covered the length right in front of him was studded with old cigarette burns. The brass taps gleamed, and row after row of bottles stretched almost to the ceiling on the shelves behind the bar. There was a pool table; cropped green felt with a blue streak of chalk on the leather padding around the top left pocket. A quiz machine tucked in one corner, flashing quietly to itself. Electric – properly electric, he could see the wires, not the wireless magical lamps he had in his flat - lights. Old photographs in faded colours, black and white newspaper clippings turning slowly towards yellow behind the glass in their frames, and every one of them still. Despite the age of some of the pictures, the frames they were set in had been polished very carefully.

This place even had a TV, mounted on the wall next to a hanging banner for something called "Cardiff RFC". The TV was playing part of what looked like the highlights reel from a rugby match with the sound turned down to a low murmur, but since it had been a very long time since Harry had seen a pub that bothered (or needed; wizards had never tried) to have a television in it, Harry couldn't help staring just for a moment.

"Hey. Hey, boyo. Over here." The man at the bar snapped his fingers in front of Harry's face. He was short and chubby, some fifteen years older than Harry himself, and holding a fraying teatowel bunched in his fist. Until about twenty seconds ago, he'd been working on the inside of a pint glass; it was still on the bar in front of him. He wore a black and red shirt that drew a little tight across his belly (the words **_THE REV JAMES, BREWED 1885_** were written across it in large white letters, just above the image of a man in an old-fashioned clergyman's suit) and his voice was the sort of fast, rolling Welsh that Harry had trouble following unless he concentrated on it properly. "Look at me. What can I get you?"

Harry shrugged. "Um..." He glanced at a chalkboard behind the bar, where a list of foods had been put up in very large, extravagant writing.

What the hell. He had a little Muggle money. Not much, but it was standard office policy to carry at least a few spare pounds in most of his Muggle clothes in case of emergencies. And he really _was_ hungry. Ducking out during his lunch break was the only time he had to spare lately. Mrs Weasley made an effort to send Ron to work with at least three times as much food as any one person could actually eat, but today Harry simply hadn't had time to stop, not even for sandwiches made from leftover Christmas ham, lettuce and tomato kept crisp with a Frigidairius Charm and the sort of spongy white, heavily buttered bread that he was certain must have had an entirely different charm on it to keep it soft and fresh. Apparating over a hundred miles in one go didn't do much to help the appetite either – long distance Apparition did funny things to your body's awareness of time passing anyway; it was a little as though your stomach thought you had been travelling all day even while your brain knew perfectly well that you hadn't done any such thing. Harry squinted at the board.

"A roast beef sandwich? And half a pint of..." he waved vaguely at the shirt. He didn't think he'd ever actually tried to buy the sort of alcohol that Muggles drank. Dudley had sent him a bottle of cheap scotch once (apparently when he'd gone to a boxing tournament somewhere in Fife) but the Muggle kind didn't warm you up the way firewhiskey did and Harry had never finished more than a quarter of the bottle. Most of it had actually gone into visitors like Hagrid and, surprisingly, Professor McGonagall, who had taken one look at it and promptly transfigured it into a twenty five year old bottle of something considerably better.

He didn't think he'd ever be able to call McGonagall by her first name no matter _how_ old he got.

"A half of whatever that is?"

The man gave him a strange look, but said nothing.

"I'm...actually looking for someone. Are you T. Morgan?"

It felt so stupid to say it like that. Not even a first name.

The man chuckled. "I didn't think you'd come here for the atmosphere. No, I'm not her...but I _can_ get her for you." He leaned over the bar. "Tess! There's a copper wants you!" The dishcloth sailed through the air, towards one of a series of small, cosily wood-panelled nooks that Harry had barely noticed on the way in. " ** _TESS!_** Pay attention now, woman. He's either here to arrest you or here to molest you, and either way you're wanted!"

An arm appeared from inside the snug. The hand attached to it did something very rude indeed.

"You could always ask, you know, instead of throwing things at me?" A woman's voice, faster, clipping the ends off some of her words, but the same thick, vaguely sing-song accent. "Rude, you are. I'm only over here. And how do you know he's a policeman then?"

"Because it's written above his head in letters ten feet high, what do you _think_?"

Harry tried not to blush. He'd never thought that his job had obvious give-aways like that. Gawain Robards had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure junior Aurors knew the "tells" for almost every other job imaginable, but somehow it had never occurred to him to think that his own job might have them too...much less that a man who was so clearly a Muggle might spot them. Yes, he'd said "policeman" and not "Auror", but even so.

"I'm not here investigating anything," he said hurriedly.

"Jeremy, leave him alone now. You heard the man," said a voice behind him. He spun around on his stool to look at her.

Dark hair, touched with grey at the temples and gathered untidily at the nape of her neck. She was tall, almost taller than he was, though this probably wasn't hard – Harry knew perfectly well he'd always been short, and even with the growth spurts (which had definitely helped) he was going to have to stay that way unless he got into some quite complicated appearance altering charms. Muggle clothes; dark jeans, what looked like a man's shirt and a thick green jumper with the sleeves pushed to her elbows...but he could see the handgrip of a wand protruding from her pocket and up underneath the loose hem of her shirt, so there was that too. The man behind the bar – Jeremy? – seemed not to notice that she had a wand at all; his eyes slid over it as though his brain were walking on ice. She was...not exactly a beautiful woman, but "handsome" might have worked for her, with high cheekbones, a strong jaw, a scattering of freckles and bright, messy hazel eyes that swept up and down to survey him before he could open his mouth. A thin line of scarring cut one of her eyebrows neatly in two.

She was holding a small book bound in leather, and had a smear of pencil on one cheek. She smiled a strange, crooked little smile.

"Hullo Harry. I'm Tess."

* * *

"I'm sorry about my cousin," she said quietly as she led him through a door at the back of the pub's kitchen, nodding companionably at the tall black man in chef'swhites who'd just pulled himself out of an enormous freezer. "He's been predicting I'll get arrested for something for as long as he's known what "arrested" means. Fortunately," she pulled a face, "he's not actually a seer. No police have come for me yet. No Aurors either, though he doesn't know about those."

Her voice was fast. Thoughtless. Talking to fill the silence, talking for the sake of the words. If she wanted to talk about nothing in particular, Harry thought, he could try to do that.

"What gave...I mean, how could he tell?"

" _Ach y fi_ Harry, we run a _pub._ What use is the barman if he can't notice a few things about the people who come in?"

"But-"

"It comes with the job. You're not one of our regulars, but you don't look like a casual drop-in either. You're clearly a man on a mission. No textbooks, no notes, so you're not from the university. You're looking for someone specific – me – but can't ask for them the way a friend would. He saw you looking around trying to memorise the layout of the public bar. Even your clothes...you haven't worn Muggle things much in the last few years, have you now?"

"No." Harry had to admit – somewhat sheepishly – that he hadn't. There wasn't much call for Muggle clothes at the ministry, or at least not Muggle clothes of the casual sort he was wearing. Mind you, he hadn't thought there was anything actually _wrong_ with the clothes he had picked.

"Oh, there's nothing wrong. Your clothes are fine." Harry had the uncomfortable certainty that she'd figured out what he wasn't saying. He was glad, for a moment, that the staircase they were climbing was too narrow and steep for her to turn around and see his face.

"They just look carefully chosen, is all. Nothing on your t-shirt, nothing on your jacket, nothing that would set off any suspicions or might look a little bit off. Nothing that dates. Like you're _trying_ to look like a scabby student, see, instead of really being one. A costume, isn't it," - she clipped this so it came out as **innit** \- "all made out of the same clothes you'll probably use again in a dozen other costumes in the next five years. To me, that says wizard who normally knows Muggle things but who's fallen out of practice so he's gone as blank as he can just to be sure he's still passing, hasn't accidentally put himself ten years too far back. To my cousin, to most barkeeps, it says working copper who's pretending not to be one. Tom at the Leaky Cauldron could pick more, and I remember the man who ran the Hog's Head being _amazing_ at it, but..." She shrugged. "Jeremy's not far wrong either, give him points for trying."

The door at the top of the stairs – painted black, with a scrap of paper taped to it - swung open without being touched. Harry couldn't quite resist trying to read the note. It was covered in writing; the same big, casual hand, with its extravagantly looping **_f_** s, **_g_** s and **_y_** s, as had been on the chalkboard downstairs. 

_Visitors please note_

 _This is NOT a guest room._ _The guest rooms are downstairs, take a left from the public bar. I don't care how drunk you are. I don't care how loudly you call for someone to open the door. I don't care how much time you spend hammering or trying your key in a lock that doesn't fit it. This area is strictly private. No one gets to sleep here without my invitation!_

 _Thank you_

 _The Management_

The sofa inside the flat was the sort of pleasantly overstuffed, squashy thing that he remembered from the Gryffindor common room. There were photos on the walls; he thought he could see some of the photos moving from the corner of his eye, but just like downstairs most of them seemed to be fixed. The first one Harry got a good look at was a still Muggle shot, a young man. He looked a little familiar (though Harry couldn't place him), had his dark hair clipped very short, and looked as though the high collar on his dark blue tunic was probably a little too tight. A muddy pair of trainers sat on a mat that ordered visitors to **_TAKE YOUR BLOODY SHOES OFF._** A hot plate had been tucked away in a corner; an old fashioned kettle with an enormous dent in it was still steaming gently as it rested on the unlit gas jet. An empty mug perched on a pile of folded newspapers – one _Daily Prophet,_ one _Quibbler_ and a copy of the _Guardian_ that Harry was fairly sure had been put on the top on purpose to hide some of the stranger things going on with the _Quibbler_ 's front page! - on the coffee table, next to an old-fashioned brass microscope and several wooden boxes that were probably full of slides.

Hermione might have liked this apartment. There were a great many books.

The woman – Harry supposed he might have to call her Tess – pulled her wand out and twitched it as though she was trying to shake off a fly from its tip. Her empty mug sprouted four sturdy little legs, trotted away until it could find some way of climbing to the benchtop and began to wash itself in the sink.

Definitely a witch then. _Definitely._ Albeit one who apparently read the _Guardian_.

"Cup of tea?"

She seemed uncertain of what to say now they were up here. One side of her mouth twitched, her expression questioning itself even as it spread across her face.

 _Tick. Tick. Tick._ The clock on the wall seemed very loud.

"That door leads to my study. My old school trunk is in by the corner, with all old things boxed up inside. The photo albums and books on the shelves next to it will have some things too. Look there, as much as you want. I have some accounts to finish," she gestured with the leather-bound book she was still holding, "so you have privacy, but if you find anything you want to know more about..."

That smile again.

"Lily always thought you'd grow up handsome, you know. And happy. She talked about it a lot. Your dad spun daydreams of his boy the Quidditch legend, but Lily just wanted to see you happy." She took a deep breath. Squared her shoulders. Flicked her wrist out in a gesture that might have been imperious if not for that twisted little smile. "Go on. It's all yours. I'll bring that sandwich you bought up for you."

* * *

"What the...?"

The doll in his hands was only about as long as a wand. It had a tiny moustache and black hair that had been carefully slicked back into place. All of its small doll-sized clothes were white – white singlet, white trousers with a line of red up each leg that couldn't have been thicker than a pencil stroke, even white trainers with miniscule eyelash-fine black strokes running over the sides – except for a tiny yellow leather jacket, with minute buckles hanging open at the front.

It was absolutely, indisputably a tiny Freddie Mercury.

"Heads up!"

Harry stuck his hand out almost without thinking. A vaguely sandwich shaped paper bag – heavy enough to promise a generous serving, smelling delicious, the paper gone greasy with drips and drabs of branston pickle – smacked against his palm, and his fingers closed around it automatically. He'd hardly needed to look up.

Tess made an approving noise from the doorway. "You _are_ good. I'd heard you were."

Harry shot her a questioning look.

"My boy was a few years behind you. Different house, of course. I doubt you'd know him except maybe in passing, but...everyone notices a good seeker, and I suspect you stick out more than most."

Of course. The man in the Muggle photo _had_ looked vaguely familar. Harry closed his eyes. Somewhere in his memory he knew there had been a thin-faced boy with an exploding dandelion of dark hair – they'd been working on the Static Jinx that day...there were still sparks leaping from the tips of his fingers, he must have been buzzed only a moment or two before – grinning broadly and making his friends yelp every time he touched them. He couldn't remember the name to go with the face, but it was there. The face in his memory was younger and smaller, but not _that_ far removed, and it had been there somewhere in the background of Dumbledore's Army, calling Umbridge rude names.

Harry picked up the doll again. Beneath the clothes, he could feel the wires that held its joints together. "What the hell is this?"

Tess burst out laughing.

"I'd forgotten that! God, look at it...it must have gotten stuck that way..."

"What _is_ it?"

She looked at least ten years younger when she was laughing. "Your mam, she... _hahaha!_ When we were in our fifth year, Professor Flitwick put out a challenge for some of his best students. Offered a prize, you know, for really good charmwork in his OWL classes? Lily had a bit of a," she paused, searching for the right word and clearly trying to stifle her glee, "a...thing about Freddie Mercury."

The thought seemed ridiculous. It careened around Harry's head like a dodgem car gone feral (or perhaps a very small, very precise Bludger) and the only response he could think through fully enough to make was a sort of slow, disbelieving squawk. It wouldn't come out otherwise, definitely not as real words. He swallowed. Tried again.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. She wasn't the only one, either." Tess shot him a sideways look, trying and failing to look stern. "Don't you look at me like that. You're not the only one to have had favourites, and he was one of hers. Funny teeth, of course, but he was a very handsome man in his day. Shame he preferred boys, really."

She came into the room properly. Sat down on the edge of the battered desk in front of a window that seemed to overlook nothing but a small courtyard leading into a narrow alleyway far below. One of her hands was rummaging absentmindedly in the desk drawer, which must have been considerably bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Behind her back, Harry could see a broad expanse of tiled roofs sloping away towards the docks.

"Lily had her thing about Freddie, see. And she had magic. So she made a little Freddie of her own, and charmed it so it would change every now and again to match whatever the real one had last worn to perform." She'd managed to stop laughing, but it didn't look as though it would take very much to push her back there. "You're lucky it got stuck in 1986. The first outfit I remember seeing it in had longer hair, and a black and white harlequin jumpsuit thing that might give you nightmares. _Much_ more seventies." Her smile softened. "She won the prize, though. Flitwick loved it."

Harry's stomach growled. The sandwich had been lying beside him, forgotten, but it was starting to look better and better. Aunt Petunia would have shouted at him for hours if he'd dropped crumbs on the carpet at Privet Drive...but quite frankly he was almost too hungry to care.

Almost.

Harry had stripped Privet Drive and the Dursleys out of his life as far as he could, but some things didn't go away easily. He swallowed hurriedly, reaching for his wand to banish the crumbs. "Sorry."

"Leave it. I'll fix it later. You're not the only one who eats in here anyway, so finish your sandwich before you worry about mess." She was still rummaging in the drawer. Whatever she was looking for seemed to be stuck under something else. "Aha!"

Harry knew most Weasley products by sight these days. These ones seemed to be nothing but a small bag of plain glass marbles, without the cats-eye streak of colour in the middle. He knew exactly what these were.

Memory Marbles were limited at best. They could only hold one memory each, and not in the brilliant detail that a Pensieve could, so it was pretty obvious that a cheaper, entirely temporary alternative to the Pensieve was all they could ever be. The simplified form of the memory sealant was still a complicated enough potion that it had taken George months to get the recipe right. He'd given up on the runic inscriptions entirely when he'd realised that the marbles were just too small to hold them. Even so, both he and Ron (and even Percy, who seemed to have taken over doing the books) swore it had been worth every false start and melted cauldron. They'd tested the first completed batch on Mrs Weasley the Christmas before last. It had taken three weeks and a lot of organisation to fill a whole bagful of marbles with the memory of carefully doctored scraped knees, reading lessons with Beedle the Bard in front of the fire, new jumpers at Christmas...but they had finally found a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes product of which she could wholeheartedly approve.

(George had Ron and Ginny – and probably the rest of the Weasleys too - adding Memory Marbles to another bag as well. Ron called it "Fred's Bag", but wouldn't say anything about what he'd put inside.)

As he watched, the marble in her hand glowed faintly, and a thin thread of shining yellow – the same shade as the doll's tiny leather jacket – spread like ink poured into water, crawling outwards from a point too small to see somewhere in the centre of the glass. She tossed it to him, apparently trusting him to catch it.

"When you've got a moment, sit down with this. If I've done this right...you should be able to watch her make it."

Harry tucked it safely away in his pocket.

* * *

The rest of the day dragged like treacle. _Cold_ treacle.

There was paperwork to do just like there always was, and Harry thought he spotted Draco Malfoy coming out of Robards' office at some point during the late afternoon, but that was all. Ron seemed distracted. Neville had been sent out to deal with some sort of bizarre plant-related emergency (Harry hadn't heard the full briefing, but it seemed to involve attempts to graft Venomous Tentacula and Snargaluff plants into one unholy monstrosity that was fertilised with human blood) and hadn't been seen since mid-morning anyway.

They were kept in the office late into the night, working out the kinks in whatever Malfoy had given Robards, so Harry didn't get to say goodnight to Teddy except hurriedly over the floo. Even then, it had only been because Teddy – who had recently started changing his appearance to be closer to whoever he was talking to, and who had therefore appeared in the fireplace sporting an old pair of glasses with no lenses in them and a serviceable copy of Harry's own messy hair...at least for the first minute or so before he yawned hugely, lost control of the morph, and sent his nose rocketing back to what Harry thought of as its "normal" shape as though it was on the end of a stretched rubber band – had begged "Granny" to let him stay up _just a little bit longer_ , _pleeeeeeeeeease_ and make the call. Harry had promised he would be there on Sunday as usual, but had had to close the connection before anything else could be said.

It was, on the whole, the sort of day Harry wasn't sad to see end. He sighed with relief almost as soon as his front door closed behind him, and quietly hoped he could find something _really simple_ to have for dinner. He'd just made up his mind about scrambled eggs on toast and set a fork to whisk through them on its own when he was interrupted by a long, wet **_schluuuuurp._** It was Arnold, curled up on top of the rubbish bin and snaking his tongue through the loop at the top of the bag to get at all the fascinatingly disgusting things inside. As usual, the Pygmy Puff did not say hello.

Harry gave him the eggshells anyway. He was searching his pockets for some lint to add to it – Arnold regarded pocket lint in much the same way small children thought of the sherbet dust that came off Fizzing Whizzbees – when his fingers closed around the cool glass marble.

He'd forgotten about it. Completely.

 _"When you've got a moment, sit down with this. If I've done this right..."_

He had never really seen a "good" memory of his parents. If he tried to think of the memories he _had_ seen, all that came to the surface was the thought of Snape. Snape savagely angry, snatching him away from a Pensieve and hurling him bodily out the door. Snape pale and cold and shaking slightly as the venom took him, dying in a pool of spreading blood on the floor of the Shrieking Shack...

 _No! Stop it!_

Harry shook his head, trying to clear it. This wouldn't be like that. This couldn't be like that. He wanted this. He _did._

(He'd dreamed of blood in the Shack hundreds of times since the battle had ended; he heard the dry slither of scales on dusty wood, the choked off gasp of pain, far more clearly in the dreams than he ever had in reality...)

His hand tightened on the marble in his pocket. He felt it warm, and closed his eyes as the smell of a hundred thousand dusty books found him. Around him, the Hogwarts library sketched itself into shape one shadow at a time.

* * *

 _It's dark. The library closes at eight, so it can't be as late as that, but the the sky hangs low and heavy and it's the colour of wet slate. Snow whispers against the mullioned windows. Everything outside looks...sketched, less than solid, less than real, but there's a tiny glowing light in the dark about where Hagrid's hut ought to be. The library has always been comfortable though, laid with thick carpets to muffle the sound of footsteps, the spaces between shelves charmed to hold a set temperature to preserve some of the more fragile books. Torches float above the desks, held in deep glass bowls to keep ashes from drifting down onto parchment._

 _It would make more sense to see Hermione sitting at the table. This is Hermione's place...but the girl at the table has red hair instead of brown, straight instead of curly, gleaming in the firelight and hanging in a long fall down her back. She tickles her chin thoughtfully with the end of her quill. The pile of books beside her is enormous; half of the pile floats upwards and hangs in the air for a moment when she goes back to one of the books (of course it's in the middle of the pile) to check something, then lands in place again with a solid thud. The books are real. The library is real._

Harry hadn't had enough experience with other people's memories to know for sure what would happen if he tried to leave the room and go up to Gryffindor Tower, but he didn't think the books there would still be heavy enough to raise a little puff of dust on impact. This, right here, was real enough then, even if nothing else in the castle could be.

Something in his chest began to ache.

 _"I think I know how to do it now. How many did you bring?"_

 _This is aimed at a girl who seems to be made entirely out of elbows and knees, tall and gangling and with a battered khaki canvas satchel slung over her shoulder for a book bag. Peeling black letters are stamped across the flap,_ _almost_ _too faded to read. The first three letters say_ _ **MOR.**_

To be honest he hadn't even seen this other girl there until she moved. All his attention belonged to the girl with red hair shining in the firelight. Everything else was just furniture, backdrop for the hunger that clenched tight as a fist in his gut.

Lily Evans was beautiful.

 _The tall girl picks up an armful of books. She begins banishing them to their places on the shelves. "All of them. Why you wanted my_ _ **entire**_ _library, I'll never know."_

 _Lily starts counting off reasons on her fingers. "One, you have the biggest record collection of anyone I've ever met. Two, your mum can shrink everything down so the poor owls don't hurt themselves trying to deliver them all. Three, I'm not sure who I'm making yet, so I need as many as possible..."_

 _"You know exactly who you're making, Lily. And you're a terrible liar." There's no rancour in the words._

 _Lily pokes her tongue out. Blows a raspberry. It's a very childish gesture for someone with a prefect's badge pinned to her robes._

 _"Well...yeah. The rest of it is true though, and honestly it's about time this place had some good music. Have you_ _ **heard**_ _the Hobgoblins?" Lily pulls a face, a picture of eloquent, but entirely silent, disgust. "The next project is definitely going to be a proper record player. If there's a wizarding wireless then there must be a way."_

 _"I can't remember. Was it you who tried to bring one, back in first year? And it blew up?"_

 _"Sev tried to tell me about centres of magic and what would happen to Muggle things if I brought them to school, but I wasn't listening. Tuney was_ _ **furious**_ _when she heard what I'd done to her hi fi. Mum and Dad had told her to let me have it, because I was going away and she wasn't..."_

 _The last of the books soars towards a distant shelf, pages fluttering in mid-flight, and Lily begins to search through her own bookbag. Where Tess has a frayed satchel, Lily's bag is very nearly new, with white flowers stitched into the leather and badges pinned all along the length of the strap from one end to the other. One of them is bright orange, calling for women's liberation beneath a clenched black fist. Another resembles nothing else so much as a tall blue telephone box._

 _"She's not happy about this either. She sent it, of course, but if I ever tell anyone that she bought an action figure , she'll never forgive me. I'm especially not allowed to tell her boyfriend, since he 'might laugh at her'."_

 _"What's this one called? Is it still Cecil?"_

 _"_ _Hubert. The last one was Cecil. I think Tuney chooses her new boyfriend by how 'respectable' his name is and how boring his hobbies are. She usually gets rid of them just as I'm starting to be able to talk to them like a normal person too. God knows why. The moment they become the least bit interesting..."_

 _"It's fear, isn't it? She thinks you'll steal him away, right, and then she'll have to start all over." Tess shrugs "_ _I'd_ _afraid of having a sister who looked like you too, Lil. You know the way James Potter drools."_

 _"_ _I don't want Hubert, any more than I want James Potter. She can keep him for as long as she likes." She pauses to think, trying very hard to be fair. "I suppose he's nice enough, but he's not my type. None of her boyfriends have been my type. I've never gone near them. I never will. She_ _ **knows**_ _that." Lily sighs. "If I understood Petunia, I think I'd understand everything."_

 _She rolls her sleeves past her elbows, shakes half a dozen hairpins from some mysterious hidden place inside them, pins the loose hair away from her face._

 _"Shall we?"_

 _There's something weirdly off-putting about seeing a box with a little plastic window sitting on a table in the Hogwarts library. It seems somehow to be a very Muggle thing. Dudley must have had dozens of toys that came packaged this way over the years. He had – he will have, he can't possibly exist in this memory when Aunt Petunia is stll with "Hubert" and not Uncle Vernon - some that had come in_ _ **exactly**_ _this packaging, at least a dozen plastic men with improbable muscles. They usually broke, or lost limbs, or got mauled by Aunt Marge's bulldogs and then were left to gather dust...but where Dudley had always torn into the packaging like he thought the toy might not be there if he wasn't fast enough to reach it, Lily barely touches it. She doesn't need to._

 _The staples detach with a soft pop and fall onto the table. The cardboard sides of the box collapse. The doll inside is held in place with plastic strips across forehead and wrists and thighs, a tiny Frankenstein-monster on the slab; the plastic tabs loosen themselves and fall away. This is much, much simpler than attacking the bindings with scissors like Aunt Petunia always had to do – like she_ _ **will**_ _have to do - for Dudley's new toys._

Harry made a private note to double-check the spell later. It might do for some of Teddy's things too. Who knew toys were so difficult to get out of their boxes?

 _Lily's hands are quick and certain pulling the doll clear; her fingers strip it of trousers, pullover, boots, even a tiny stable belt and a miniscule beret. She passes the clothes over. "Can you do these while I do the body? It'll save time."_

 _"What about the gun?"_

 _"Turn it into a microphone or something. I don't suppose we...no. No, forget I asked. We're already doing lots of things. If we add another and get it wrong, we'll have nothing but a mess. I'd rather be sure."_

 _With that both girls bend their heads over their work, red and dark close enough to nearly touch._

 _The clothes in Tess' hand don't seem to be changing very much; the only obvious sign of anything so far is one lazy blue spark that snakes along the tiny seams of the pullover. The air smells faintly of tin. Whatever it is she's doing, it seems to need a lot of concentration; she has a crease between her eyebrows and is muttering furiously under her breath._

 _Lily seems much more calm. She has a photo propped up in front of her; her eyes flick up to the photo, back down to the doll, back to the photo, back to the doll...back and forth in a steady rhythm. The tip of her wand moves as precisely as a scalpel as she traces complicated patterns on smooth plastic doll skin – shaving bulk off the chest here, changing the shape of the nose there, lingering for a bare moment more to get tiny lips as full as they ought to be. The doll's skin tone shifts ever so slightly, taking on a slight golden note that wasn't there a moment before. A hairline-thin scar appears underneath one eye. The eyes themselves change colour, shifting from icy painted blue to something so dark that it seems almost black. Flocked black fuzz on its crown begins to grow._

 _She tugs at the doll's feet gently to make its legs longer, stretching the naked doll like modelling clay...and stops, frowning._

 _"Oh. Damn."_

 _"What is-_ _ **OW!**_ _Bugger!" The blue spark brushes Tess' fingers. She's swearing as she jams them in her mouth. "What did you do?"_

 _"I haven't done anything yet, but...you know how we wanted to put a lot of songs on this?"_

 _Lily chooses her words carefully. Her face is nearly scarlet._

 _"Yeah?"_

 _"And you know how this works? The more detail we put into his appearance, the more the recording charms on top of it will support?"_

 _More cautiously."Yeah?"_

 _Lily raises her eyebrows, jerks her chin towards the doll's torso. The smooth, flat, entirely sexless doll's torso. "I haven't put anything there. Do you" - she's losing her composure, spluttering with laughter, but she tries even as her mouth turns up wickedly – "you know. Do you think it would help?"_

 _It takes time to think of a reply for something like that. Indeed, for the first few seconds, Tess doesn't say_ _ **anything at all.**_ _She just sits there, blinking stupidly with her mouth open. Her shoulders begin to shake. A laugh bubbles up entirely without her consent._

 _"...how exactly were you planning to get details about Freddie Mercury's knob then? Ask for volunteers to model?"_

 _That does it. Both girls collapse into helpless giggles. Tess is pounding at the table with her fist. Lily has tears shining in her eyes._

 _"Hey Lil...I dare you to make that the on switch."_


End file.
